About Studio Meraki

My name is Caroline Edlund and I live on Gotland with my family. I have worked as a graphic designer all my life, but in recent years I have fallen in love with clay. It was my salvation when I felt stuck in a workplace where I didn't feel comfortable and had completely lost touch with my creativity. I felt bad, both mentally and physically, but in the clay I found a way to breathe, land and find my way back to myself. By creating with my hands I found joy, presence and desire again. Letting my hands play freely with the material was like meditation for me.

In an old car workshop in our yard, I started creating my Happy Place - my beloved ceramics studio. My Studio Meraki. It started one summer in a small corner of a crowded garage. There I set up my first turntable, screwed some shelves to the wall and put legs on an old crooked table top. When autumn came and the garage got colder and colder, I moved my little studio down to the basement of the house instead. It was warmer there. During the past winter, I outgrew my little boiler room and my dear partner thought it was probably time to prepare the old car workshop into a real studio for me. Said and done. Old stuff was cleaned, sold and thrown away. Workbenches and shelves were built, electricity was installed, painted and fixed. And as the icing on the cake, a large glass section with doors was installed that let in a lot of lovely daylight and made the studio a wonderfully lovely place to be.

Meraki is Greek and means “to do something with soul, heart, creativity and love”. And it fits so well with how I feel when I create in clay. I don’t follow any rules but let my creativity and my heart guide me. Sometimes it gets crazy. And sometimes it gets absolutely wonderful.

The best thing I know (next to getting my hands in the mud) is to pack the family into our campervan and go on a road trip. Living simply and in a small space, but still having all of nature as our living room, that's when I feel at my best.

I find a lot of my inspiration in nature, especially the sea and the environment around it. The long swells that appear out of nowhere a moment after the ferry has disappeared on the horizon. The wild storm waves that wash over you when you stand a little too close to the quayside, and give you an adrenaline rush like no other. The faint ripples on a completely calm and still sea where the horizon is so blurred that you don't really know where the sea ends and the sky begins. White sand that flows between your fingers like sugar, round stones in a thousand shades of gray that have been polished by the sea and time, rauks that stand just as steady regardless of what the SMHI sea report says, and driftwood that has washed ashore and asks to live on and become something even more beautiful. All of that inspires me to create my ceramics.

Textures, irregularities and asymmetrical shapes are something that often appear in my work. Imperfection is a part of nature, and nature is my greatest inspiration. In nature, there are never two exact copies, and you won't find that with me either. My creations are unique, all slightly different in shape, size or color. I think that makes them extra beautiful. It gives them the feeling that a pair of real hands have shaped them. I don't strive for perfection. I want my creations to have character, soul and personality.

Everything I create bears traces of my hands and my heart. If something here speaks to you, becomes a part of your home or your everyday life, I will be very happy. That is what makes Studio Meraki alive – that my creations can continue their journey with you.

With love,
Caroline